• LIV aiming to recruit more players from PGA and DP World Tours
• Defection would raise tricky questions for European Tour Group

Rising speculation that Viktor Hovland will be the next high-profile golfer to be coaxed to the LIV tour will increase the need for Ryder Cup Europe to apply a simple qualification process for golfers on the Saudi Arabian-backed circuit.

LIV is forging ahead with plans for 2025, which include new events and the recruitment of more players from the PGA and DP World Tours. The rate of turnover is likely to be increased by the number of golfers who had three-year contracts when joining LIV, which will expire at the end of 2024.

City have not been at their overwhelming best this season, but they remain immune to the typical anxieties of a title run-in

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There are still only two points in it: Manchester City 73, Arsenal 71, Liverpool 71. It’s not over yet. If the three keep pace for the next five games, it will still be the first season since 1971-72 in which three different sides go into their final game of the season with a chance of winning the title. The hope for anybody seeking a dramatic run-in is that this weekend was just the beginning of a final month of twists and turns. But the sense is that the race has taken a decisive shift towards City and a fourth successive title for Pep Guardiola’s team.

It’s not just that City swept Luton aside 5-1 . You’d expect that; they beat them 6-2 in the FA Cup in February. Nor was it just the fact that Liverpool lost at home to Crystal Palace , the opponent Jürgen Klopp had beaten more than any other, or that Arsenal lost at home to Aston Villa , managed by their former manager Unai Emery, each detail twisting the knife in a little further. It was the way they lost, coming after the way Arsenal had played in drawing against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and the way Liverpool had played in losing to Atalanta in the Europa League .

Girls are much more likely than boys to drop out of competitive sports. It’s little wonder when revealing kits are highlighted on the global stage

Paris has long been known for its avant garde fashion. Yet the couture scene would be hard-pressed to produce anything as confounding and controversial as the Team USA track and field kits that were unveiled in the City of Lights last week.

There was nothing to see when it came to Team USA’s men’s track uniforms: standard shorts and a tank top. But when it came to their female counterparts, there was everything to see, especially around the nether regions.

The No 1 golfer’s edge around the fairways is knowing he has God at his back, even if he’s not actually carrying his bag

Whatever you may have thought watching it on TV, Scottie Scheffler didn’t win the Masters when he made that tricky birdie putt from 10ft on the eighth green, when he hit that lob-wedge to six inches on the ninth, or when he clattered that drive 340 yards down the middle of the 10th for his third successive birdie. No, he explained later, he won it about 2024 years before the tournament even started. “I believe that today’s plans were already laid out many years ago, and I could do nothing to mess them up,” Scheffler explained. And there you were thinking that God had bigger things to worry about right now than who won that green jacket.

Well, you scoff if you want to. But there’s no doubt that it gives a man a certain edge around the fairways to know he’s got the almighty at his back, even if he’s not actually carrying his bag. Scheffler has another passionate Christian, Ted Scott, to do that for him. Like Scott said, “having the God of the universe, the Creator, on your side just makes things a lot easier to deal with”. This was Scott’s fourth Masters victory, he had already won one with Scheffler and a couple of others with Bubba Watson, and he celebrated it by striding across the clubhouse lawn brandishing the flag stick from the 18th green like he was leading the crusaders into Jerusalem.

• American wins by four shots after final-round 68 at Augusta
• Åberg finishes second after challenge falters on back nine

The Masters is supposed to get under way on the back nine on Sunday. Scottie Scheffler did not bother waiting that long. Such an approach is befitting a golfer now so dominant that comparisons with Tiger Woods in his pomp are perfectly appropriate.

Hopes were rising that Ludvig Åberg might become the first Masters debutant since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979 to take delivery of the Green Jacket. Åberg’s achievement would actually have been even more historic; he had never played in a major championship before teeing up at Augusta National on Thursday.

Five-time Masters champion is maybe the only person who hasn’t cottoned on to the fact he is playing exhibition golf

The sun rose at 6.58am on Sunday in Augusta, a full three hours after Tiger Woods. Across the city, people were asleep and sharing the very same sorts of dreams, about the view down through the pines along the first fairway, the shots over the water at Amen Corner, the long walk uphill to the 18th green, where the club chairman Fred Ridley and last year’s champion Jon Rahm would be waiting ready with that freshly pressed Green Jacket. Woods says he still has these thoughts himself, in the few hours’ rest he gets between warming-down for the evening and warming-up again in the morning. For him, it’s a sixth win, and a share of Jack Nicklaus’s record.

Only a handful of the people entertaining these thoughts had a chance of actually realising them. In the 29 years Woods has been playing here no one had come from further back than six shots off the lead on Sunday. Which meant you likely needed to be at least one-under already to have the slightest chance of overtaking the third-round leader Scottie Scheffler .

Malcolm LaVergne, executor of Simpson’s estate, says ‘hard no’ to brain being given to study effects of playing in NFL

A lawyer who represented OJ Simpson said there were no plans to donate the former NFL player’s brain to science and that his body would be cremated.

Simpson, who became the subject of an intense national debate in America after he was accused – and cleared – of the 1994 murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, died last week aged 76. He was later found liable for the two killings in a civil case.

• Hole-by-hole updates from the fourth day at Augusta
• Any thoughts? Feel free to mail Scott | Official leaderboard

Welcome, patrons! If the final round of the 88th Masters tournament is even half as wild and wonderful as Moving Day …

… we’ll be in for a cracker. Will world No 1 Scottie Scheffler win his second green jacket? Will either Collin Morikawa or Bryson DeChambeau add to their major-championship resumé? Will Max Homa, Xander Schauffele or Tommy Fleetwood make their major breakthrough? Will Ludvig Aberg or Nicolai Hojgaard become the first player since 1979 to win on debut? Will something else happen? We’ll find out soon enough! Here’s the top of the leader board after 54 holes …

• Irishman due to headline UFC 303 in Las Vegas on 29 June
• Alex Pereira knocks out Jamahal Hill during UFC 300 card

Conor McGregor will make his long-awaited return to the octagon against Michael Chandler on 29 June, three years after he broke his left leg during a fight against Dustin Poirier, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president, Dana White, said. The welterweight bout is scheduled to headline the UFC 303 card in Las Vegas, White said after Saturday’s UFC 300 event.

The Irishman McGregor (22-6) has not fought since the clean break in his tibia resulted in a second TKO loss to Poirier in a row in July 2021. The injury required the former UFC featherweight and lightweight champion to undergo surgery. The former Bellator lightweight champion Chandler (23-8) also lost to his fellow American Poirier in his last fight in November 2022.